The present invention relates to a method of operating a record medium drive, and more particularly to a method of playing back only recorded areas while skipping unrecorded areas of a record medium when in playback mode.
In general, there are many types of record medium drives, such as VTR (Video Tape Recorder), R-DAT (Digital Audio Tape Recorder) and ordinary audio tape recorders for which tape is the record medium, and CDP (Compact Disk Player) and CDVP (Compact Disk Video Player) for which disks are the record media. All the record medium drives operate based on the same operational principles; however, of the record medium drives, VTR shall be taken as an example for describing how a record medium is driven during playback. In cases where a tape has a recorded program, a waiting status with no videos and audios recorded thereon continues for a certain length of time at the beginning and ending portions of the tape during playback because neither a video nor an audio is recorded at the beginning and ending portions.
There has been a drawback therefore that the audience may become bored while the waiting status is continuing for a certain length of time on playback. Another drawback is that the audience will most likely come to conclude that one program has ended or the tape playback has been completed, so the audience stops playing back the tape without further viewing any remainder of the entire recorded program when there exists an unrecorded area in the middle of the tape.